International Inspirations

By Tk Published on December 01, 2003.

From Phaidon comes a veritable United Nations of design: Area: 100 Graphic Designers, 10 Curators, 10 Design Classics, edited by Valerie Vago-Laurer and Patrick Busse and designed by Julia Hasting. The curators are Anthon Beeke, Nick Bell, Ken Cato, Shigeo Fukuda, Fernando Gutierrez, Werner Jeker, Uwe Loesch Stefan Sagmeister, Serge Serov and Omar Vulpinari, and such a wide-ranging group results in an equally wide-ranging global survey, with the 100 designers handily bio'd at some length at the back of the book. This is preceded by a sort of bonus Classics section featuring one work nominated by each of the curators. For instance, Stefan Sagmeister, no stranger to these pages, and no stranger to working for the Rolling Stones, chose the Stones' zippered Sticky Fingers album cover, by Andy Warhol and Craig Brown. Sagmeister notes in passing, "The first sentence in Victor Papanek's influential book Design for the Real World is as true today as it was when he wrote it 20 years ago: 'In persuading people to buy things they don't need, with money they don't have, in order to impress others that don't care, advertising design is probably the phoniest field in existence today.' There are people in this book who try to do something about that."